You know how sometimes stuff makes you mad? And I don’t just mean mad, I mean go-around-to-the-offender’s-house-and-smash-all-of-their-windows-with-their-face mad? No? Really? Oh… erm…
Hai, my name’s Naz, and I have an anger management problem. Certain things make me very mad. And you won’t like me when I’m mad. So here’s my new post series, cleverly entitled Stuff Naz Hates.
So, the other day, TankBear Ramp, a DK friend and I were hanging around in Dalaran, minding our own business. We decided that we’d do our daily heroic, only for a change TankBear Ramp would heal, our DK friend would tank, and I would DPS (lolret). We queued, and instantly joined the dungeon.
I watched the pretty loading screen and the progress bar for a while, before my screen cleared to a whispered message from one of our brand new PUG DPS.
“Kings plz”
No hello, and clearly no opportunity for me to buff him being as I had JUST ZONED IN and all. Just “Kings plz”, in that self-righteous all-your-buffs-are-belong-to-me tone.
I suppose you’re thinking that I should be thankful that he said please. I ignored him.
My pet hates above all other pet hates is people giving pallies a hard time about buffs.
Yes, I have lots of buffs. Yes, I can wave my magic mace and give them to you. But seriously. The heroic group will not wipe because you didn’t have Kings. The world will not end because you didn’t have an extra 550 attack power. I do buff everyone, every heroic, and every raid. I get a little perfectionist about the little red boxes in PallyPower, as my inner healer screams that they need to be green. Even when the DPS are being jerks. Usually everyone’s buffed within a minute of me zoning in. But people who message me before my screen has had an opportunity to clear, or who attempt to cause a mutiny in PUG raids because they ONLY! HAVE! TWO! PALLY! BUFFS! really get to me.
So anyway, I ignored him and started setting up PallyPower.
See this?
This is PallyPower. Most pallies have a love/hate relationship with PallyPower. It’s an incredibly useful tool, and it makes our lives so much easier, so we swear by it. On the other hand, it’s incredibly fiddly, particularly for 10 minute buffs, so we often swear at it as well.
It takes a minute or two to set it up at the start of a heroic. It takes 5-10 minutes to set it up for a raid. And then it takes a GCD per class for me to actually cast the buffs.
All adding up to me being unable to buff this group in under 1 minute and around 5 seconds. Mr Impatient was pissing me off.
15 seconds after the first whisper, Mr Impatient hits party chat.
“Kings plz”
I reply with “For that, you get nothing”. I buff everyone else, and ignore him.
It’s Azjol-Nerub. We pull the first two spiders with no problems.
“Why u no buf Kings?!” he says. We pull the first of the smaller groups around the boss, and all of a sudden all three groups plus the boss run at us. Having an inexperienced off-spec tank and an inexperienced off-spec healer, we wipe and run back. The tank, healer and I whisper “What happened?” ”Must have pulled the other groups by accident.”
“Why u no buff Kings?!!?!!!” he says again on the run back, this time with more exclamation marks. ”Because I didn’t even get the chance to zone in before you started hounding me about it!” said I. ”Learn some patience.” He continues to whine. ”I duno y u wont jst buf kings!!!!!!”
We get back in, and I buff everyone, including the whining DPS, who doesn’t notice and continues whining. We pull the first small group around the boss again, and every mob charges towards us. Our new tank and healer aren’t undergeared or poorly skilled, but they can’t manage that. We collapse into a pitiful mess of broken armor pieces.
Our healer explodes in party chat. It turns out the the second PUG DPS, a hunter, has pulled every mob in the room each time – only this time he got caught.
“Why would you pull the entire room?” asks the healer. The hunter joins in with the first PUG DPS. ”Die if no hav Kings LOL“.
At this point I lose it. ”YOU HAD KINGS THE ENTIRE TIME YOU MORON.” ”GIVE ME 2 MINUTES TO GET IN AND GET SETUP BEFORE YOU START DEMANDING BUFFS.”
They continue to argue. I leave the group. TankBearHealer Ramp and our DK friend soon follow.
Should I have just ignored him and buffed him? Undoubtedly yes. Should he have ignored the fact that he didn’t have a buff that he didn’t need, and just run the instance? Yes also.
My pointless one-person stand for a Paladin’s right to not be incessantly badgered for buffs netted me a 15 minute deserter debuff. My DK friend is so scarred by the experience that he’s having an “WoW sabbatical”. TankBearHealer Ramp and I ran the instance half an hour later with no problems.
Pallies need love too. We’ll buff you, we promise. But it’s not a single click. It’s a complicated setup, and multiple GCDs and reagents to get you all with the right combinations. For the love of all things Holy, please, give us 2 minutes before you start shouting?
It doesn’t work so well as DPS, but you always have the power to leave. I’m sure you can find something to spend your time on for 15 minutes, even if it’s out of game. Basically what I’m saying is in my experience it’s never worth putting up with arseholes unless you’re getting paid for it.
Even if you suck it up it’s just going to put you in a bad mood for even longer than the Dungeon Deserter debuff (or at least it does for me). I think this is the main contributing factor to why I love the new Dungeon Finder… though I suspect Fez’s lack of buffs to give out helps.
Agreed with dlanod.
I’ve learnt that it isn’t worth my time or energy to say anything, so usually if peeps annoy me, I just leave group.
I got schooled by my pallytank, and ever since then… I *never* complain or mention when I’m missing a pally buff. I fear pally wrath, because they wear plate and I’m all squishy. I will point our auras, or suggest different aura usage (I guess a lot of pallies don’t realize their shadow resist aura does not stack with priests’ shadow protection buff) but I can do perfectly fine with or without Kings or Wisdom, tyvm!
I haven’t seen that priests/mages/druids get the same thing at the start of 5 man groups – I know in raids people whine if they don’t have buffs, which is more understandable. Actually, I guess people probably whinge at mages for tables alot.
Yeh I get asked for tables all the time in instances. Even though the reagents are worth bugger all, seems bit of overkill for something that is going to take 15mins and wont even require you to take the time to eat the strudel anyway.
I’ve always felt lucky in that a Shadow Priest doesn’t really benefit all that much from ANY Paladin buff. I mean, it’s not Focus Magic or Moonkin Aura or any such thing.
Even when I’m healing I know that I can function just fine without the additional Intellect from Kings or the additional MP5 from Wisdom.
But back when I was playing a Rogue, yes, I would have begged for Blessing of Might.
I think a lot of people think they NEED Blessing of Kings. But they really don’t.
Old post, I know, but i felt the urge to reply.
As a person with a pally alt, I too feel the twinge of annoyance when people nag for buffs. Really, the lack of pally buffs, or paw, or int will not kill you or make the heroic run any more difficult at this point in the game.
However, if pally gives me a nonpreferred buff, I will speak up and say “Can I get kings instead of wis?” Especially if I am on my shaman, as I always drop a mana totem, and the two do not stack. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Similarly, on my paladin, I usually say at the start of the run, “Everyone’s getting kings, if you’d prefer something else, speak now.” I then give a few seconds for objections, and give kings all around. I don’t bother with PallyPower anymore, and no pallies I know do either. We work out buffs amongst ourselves the same way we did before PallyPower. It takes just as long as setting up the stupid thing, and I rebuff when my personal buff is about to run out. Hasn’t failed me yet.
It really seems pallies are singled out in this too, because I rarely get nagged for paw on my druid or int on my mage. Hardly ever get asked for table, occasionally whispered for strudel (which I gladly trade). Yet it never fails, that as soon as I zone in, “kings pls”.
PS, what’s with the sudden trend I’ve noticed of other pallies giving 10 minute buffs all around in heroics? The reagents are cheap, and stack to 100. It doesn’t break the bank to just give a single greater buff and be done with it, as opposed to having to keep an eye on the buff timer for the lessers.
rant off
Since the topic is reopened heres my thoughts.
Why use PP? Cause frankly its a lot simpler to set up in raids that way than to work it all out with the other pallies via chat or vent. And whoever is doing it can straight away see who has what improved blessings. Also if you have someone ressed during the raid (a tank for instance) you can quickly rebuff them and see at a glance that they have what they need. When u are in a pug with 4 or 5 pallies, its a lot simpler – particularly since half the time the pugs arent reading chat or have crap raiding specs with no improved blessings etc etc.
As far as heroics go – well yeah whatever suits you. I generally set it up ready, as well as set up bars and so forth before I even q. That way when u zone in its all ready.
I use PP because it allows me to see who’s missing a buff easily – I often rebuff in combat due to brez or due to the occasional 10 minute dual-spec buff necessity, so it’s good to have that heads up. One less thing to remember.
Setting up PallyPower is so fast, it’s practically two clicks per paladin and it’s done. I guess the place where it comes into its own is where you have a raid with only 2 paladins though – saves working out who gives Kings/Imp Might and who gives Kings/Imp Wis. Used to happen a lot in Pirates before half of our raid became paladins.